


Where Courage Takes Wing

by AppleSoda



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Bittersweet, Family Feels, Friendship, Gen, this is between fe9 and 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 11:10:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18093194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AppleSoda/pseuds/AppleSoda
Summary: Reyson and Leanne visit the Greil Mercenaries, where they search for remnants of their sister's past. Ike and Mist search with them, looking for memories of Elena.





	Where Courage Takes Wing

“Father was many things, but he wasn’t tidy, that’s for sure,” Mist coughed as she waved the broom about, fighting off the last of the cobwebs that cluttered the attic of their old house.

 

“Ike, give me a hand with this, will you?” She gestured over to a crate that was blocking their view.

 

“ _Brother, should we lend them a hand?_ ” Leanne asked politely.

 

“She would like to help you search,” Reyson translated. The two herons had spent the night in the company of the Greil mercenaries, but had an important purpose for their visit. As Serenes’ sole survivors, they were looking about Tellius for any clues to the lore of their people, and that included anything they could find on Princess Lillia’s past. Once he had gotten an approving nod from Ike, he gestured over to a tarp that covered another stack of boxes. Leanne hopped over and took the other end of the canvas, and gently lifted it up, uncovering, to their dismay, another stack of old belongings to pick over.

 

“We’re not home very often, and when we are, the company is usually resting off a mission,” Ike looked about the walls of the house. Every time he returned, it seemed smaller and more foreign. It was a feeling that troubled him, but not so much that anyone noticed.“You think that there might be some hint to our mother, Mist?”

 

“We don’t know for sure,” the young cleric answered. “But it’s not completely hopeless until wetry, is it?” It was that kind of can-do attitude that had kept the spirits of the company up during difficult stretches of the Mad King’s War. Ike shifted the crate of rusty axes aside, and frowned.

 

The two herons regarded the clutter with curiosity. Reyson found the size of the nest— no, Ike had said no one dwelled there— the pile— and felt a hint of awe. So this was what the warrior Greil had done with the trophies of his conquests.

 

Usually it was ravens that kept their belongings stacked and clustered together tightly, for it was a well-known saying within Kilvas that anything that wasn’t protected could be taken away easily. The mess before them, though was purely born of the actions of beorc.

 

“Oh, no. that’s not a hat, Princess Leanne!” Mist plucked a wooden circle from where the other girl had taken it from a box, and was modeling it like a diadem. “Here.” She held a white, stiff cloth to it. “See? It’s an embroidery hoop. We use it to sew.” She mimed the motions of a needle and thread, then held up a pouch that she used to collect medicinal herbs while out in the field. “I guess mother used it some time ago to make our clothes.”

 

“Father could have had a secret embroidery habit.” Ike shrugged. “Tunics can tear and break when you’re out in the field away from home.” Recently, he had taken up learning from Mist and Titania, and occasionally repaired shirts and capes as a way to think about something other than battle. Greil was a homebody through and through when the both of them were younger, and doted on helping Elena around the house when he could.

 

Leanne seemed excited at the set of tools when she heard the explanation. “I…learn?” She asked, the words clumsily coming out.

 

“Sure! It’s not so hard once you get used to it.”

 

“Th-thank you,” The heron princess responded, and then beamed with delight at the prospects of finding out something new.

 

_“Leanne, don’t hurt yourself with the needle.”_

 

 _“I’d be better at it than you! All you think about is fighting, and we can’t even do that very well!”_ Leanne shot back.

 

“Oh, I recognize that tone in any language,” Ike laughed, as he and Mist continued to search, which got a rare, quiet chuckle out of the normally distant Prince Reyson. When they had met the herons initially, the white-winged laguz had seemed ethereal and distant compared to the cat and lion tribes of Gallia. But as time had passed, the clan that had once led the Kingdom of Serenes proved to be warm and lively. It made sense just how Princess Lillia and their mother had become friends so quickly.

 

They had found something at last a little later on. It was an unimpressive little folded piece of parchment wedged quietly into a corner of a wooden box of combs and hairpins. If another moment passed, Mist would’ve thought it was a piece of refuse and tossed it with other things they would clear out of the attic.

 

The paper was almost faded, but as clear as day, there were faint pen marks on it. Elena had carefully written it down many years ago, and used a spine of the book to inexactly mark down the gridlines of a piece of music. On it, she had written notes in the margins.

 

Glancing closer, Leanne saw where she had been corrected by someone in the recording of the lyrics and notes.

 

The knowledge that at some point in time, Lillia had passed down the song of the herons to Elena. And it had meant everything. But there was a difference between the knowledge of it that hung emptily among the people the two women left behind, and the words themselves, inked onto the page that had outlasted both of them. It was a gift, and a message.

 

“What do you think that they meant to pass down?” Asked Mist, who was blinking back tears. For so long, she had thought that the medallion and the song were all that were left of her mother. To find anything, even a small fragment, was to fill her world back up with time that she had thought would never return.

 

“Strength,” Ike offered. “Courage.” He wasn’t religious by nature, but remembered that priestesses would fill the rest of the sentence in with ‘for the living of these days,’ at the close of their service, thanking the goddess. But in a realm where the goddess seemed to leave no trace of mercy so often, he wondered if the traits themselves would be enough to support the small family that he fought hard to protect. Doubt was another side of himself that he wasn’t quite ready to show just yet.

 

“Leanne and I will need all the courage we can get,” Reyson was quiet, but nodded as he turned the paper over in his hands. “The fight isn’t over for us. I can sense it.” He took a sharp breath, but still felt the weight of his late sister’s words. Even when hope seemed completely lost, there was the song of release that every heron, young or old, could turn to. The end of the song spurred the singer to take flight, and so they would, when the time came, towards whatever destiny held for them next. In silence, Leanne traced the beautiful handwriting where Lillia had added comments or crossed out parts that Elena had gotten wrong. It was a collaboration between beorc and heron laguz thought to be impossible. Yet there, plain as day, there was proof of something other than hatred.

 

“You’ll have the blades of our mercenaries, should you need it,” Ike vowed. 

 

“That’s right. And you’re always a welcome guest at base.” Mist added. “So, anyone up for dinner and a quick sewing lesson?” She held up the embroidery hoop, getting Leanne’s attention.

 

_“I bet I’ll learn faster than you, Reyson!”_

 

“Now look what you’ve gotten started,” grumbled the heron prince, although a smile had crept onto his face. “If I don’t excel at this, she’ll never let me live it down.”

 

On the verge of whatever chapter would come next, both mercenaries and royals departed the attic and headed out the doors of the house, where something new awaited them.


End file.
